Jan 12, 2015. Marathon

Kathy is still excited about her Packers winning!   Personally, Bitts and I are tired of all the talk and just want it over.  This morning while Kathy was having her coffee in the cockpit, and we were trying to get a mid-morning nap in, we heard a 50 foot sailboat call the Coast Guard.  Kathy, being nosy as she is, turned to channel 22 to see what was up.  Turns out this sailboat was circling a 10 foot wooden boat with a sail that he described as having foreign nationals on it, speaking Spanish with either a deceased, or dying person on board.  Emergency on the high seas, it was great.  To sum up 1.5 hours of Coastie talk with 2 helicopters and one of their boats, seems like there were 6 people on this make shift boat, which actually turned out to be made of styrofoam.  They were located about 12 miles south of us, and had 5 men and 1 woman on board.  The Coast Guard had to get a second helicopter with a rescue swimmer/medic to get the woman who was unconscious, bleeding, (never found out from where), but breathing on her own.  We heard them say she was bleeding pretty bad.  They rescued her and took her to Fisherman's Hospital here in Marathon.  We got to see the helicopter go past us.  Apparently these people had been at sea for 3-4 weeks, and they were severely dehydrated.  The Coast Guard boat picked up the remaining five.  Just now, (about 5 hours later), we saw the Coast Guard towing the remains of that boat...did not look good.  Well that was our excitement for the day.  I told Bitts we were lucky to have a boat made out of fiberglass and not styrofoam.  We wondered how long it took to save their cups and plates to make that boat.